My Word

Some Shelby County High School graduates returned home the weekend of Jan. 25 for basketball Homecoming activities. Two graduates returned home permanently last August, when they started teaching positions at East Middle: Casey Page and Marcie Wright.

They join countless others who received their educations in Shelby County and have returned to work alongside former teachers in classrooms where they once could have sat.

On Jan. 29, the state announced an $86 million cut in child-care assistance for low-income working parents. Also included in the cuts are subsidies to relatives raising abused or neglected children.

That’s quite a statement for a governor who hung his hat on a platform of the importance of early childhood education, created a statewide Early Childhood Advisory Council and a Governor’s Office of Early Childhood, none of which have made any comment on the impending collapse of the system that houses most of our children under the age of 5 on any given day.

It was in the late 1950s, while having lunch with Martha Donovan, part-owner in the Smith-McKenney Drugstore on Main Street, she said they had good people working for them, but none of the women wanted to work at night or on weekends.

What I have to say about President Barack Obama’s “gun grab” is lengthy but necessary in order to give a proper historical approach and clear up the most recent root cause or the origin of his mindset.

This is not a new idea or effort that has just occurred to Mr. Obama, he and others of his persuasion have labored from time to time toward this end. The horrible event at Newtown, Conn., was not the trigger, but it is just the opportunity to make inroads toward the goal to remove guns and repeal (in some form) the Second Amendment to our Constitution.

A recent post on Facebook displays a series of photos detailing the serial deconstruction of a landmark building in Shelbyville, a building that was once considered among the finest in the state. Soon those shattered bricks will fade into memory and be forgotten, just the same as the grand cupola that once adorned its rooftop.

Jack Swindler is a fifth-grader at Southside Elementary but he is already a leader, working with school administrators to start a recycling program among the students and staff. He wrote a letter to the teachers that explained, “I’m part of the TAG [Talented And Gifted] program, and I qualified for leadership. As a leader, I want to help this school recycle.”

Southside Principal Suzanne Burkhardt said the students are familiar with ways to help the environment since the school has an Energy Team, made up of students, including Jack.

Hi, my name is Max. I was picked up a few months ago. My owner dropped me on the road. At least I wasn’t thrown from a moving car. I’ve heard of that happening.

This big nice guy put me in a truck and took me in. He gave me a shot and some yucky yellow medicine. I was put back in a place with a bunch of barking dogs. It sure seemed loud. Gee, so many other dogs here, some sad. Some look mad. Here comes a lady with some food. And water. She talked nice to me.

If 100 people were drowning and you had the ability to save 99, would you? Of course you would. We didn’t do anything nearly as heroic in Congress last week, but the question of saving as many as we can from a potentially devastating consequence was relevant. The question was: Do you stand aside and let taxes increase for everyone or do you try to save as many taxpayers as possible before they do?